CISPA Passes House with Veto Threat; With ACTA All But Dead, Is TPP The Next Fight?

CISPA Passes House With Veto Threat

CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing Protection Act, is intended to”allow elements of the intelligence community to share cyber threat intelligence with private-sector entities and utilities and to encourage the sharing of such intelligence”.  It has become the target of significant opposition from the internet community as whole (netizens) upset over the bills over-breadth and lack of protection for privacy, but unlike in SOPA the tech community was behind CISPA.  In amazing show of strength, the netizens were able to get seven sponsors to vote against the bill and elicited a veto threat from the White House over the bill as it passed the House.  Since then Mozilla has become the first tech company to come out against CISPA asserting that

The bill infringes on our privacy, includes vague definitions of cybersecurity, and grants immunities to companies and government that are too broad around information  misuse.

 The bill now moves to Senate where its passage intact is unlikely.

More Info: CISPA as Passed by House; Mozilla bashes CISPA, as Microsoft double downs its support (Digital Trends); In Cybersecurity Bill CISPA Passage, Voices of the Internet Community Were Heard(Daily Beast),  CISPA: What now? (Digital Trends);What Everyone Who Uses The Internet Needs To Know About CISPA (Think Progress); CISPA, Netizens and the Internet’s Coming of Age Party (Huffington Post).

From ACTA to TPP, New Trade Negotations Could Be Next Cyber Battle

TPP Member States

Last week, Neelie Kroes the EU’s Commission for Digital Agenda, conceded that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that has been the subject of demonstrations across Europe was unlikely to be ratified by the European Parliament stating “[w]e are now likely to be in a world without SOPA and without ACTA.”  This has turned attention to the  Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement  (TPPA) as its twelfth round of negotiations resume this week in Dallas.  TPPA has been called “the mother of all free-trade agreements”, as it seeks to expand an existing agreement between Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore to include the U.S., Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Vietnam and possibly Canada, Mexico and Japan.  Business groups are supportive of the negotiations and are pushing for increased protection of intellectual property rights, while opponents are criticizing TPPA for its lack of transparency and fear it could be even worse than ACTA.

More Info: Trans-Pacific trade talks latest IP battleground (Politic0); Law Professors Call for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Transparency, Infojustice.org, Acta unlikely to be ratified in Europe, says Kroes, The Guardian, The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, Congressional Research Service Report.